Ready or Not, Here I Come
by SpearmintMirage
Summary: Sweet little Stephanie loved nothing more than to play hide and seek and do what was asked of her. But a certain golden statue inspires her to change the rules of her once-innocent game...[Clock Tower: Ghost Head/The Struggle Within]


**(A/N: Thank you to SyberiaWinx for pointing out an error: When I wrote this, I forgot that Phillip had first hidden the statue in the den, and it only wound up in Stephanie's room sometime** **after** **she went crazy. If I eventually rewrite this I'll fix it, but for now please forgive the error.)**

* * *

Hide and seek was Stephanie's favorite game.

Memories often came to her of the earliest instances of her and her father's ritual. She clearly remembered lying on the hardwood floor of the dining room or the kitchen, coloring or reading contently. Suddenly, her ears would catch the front door opening in its low creak. To her mother, it was a relief, to her brother and sister a joy. But to little Stephanie, it was a trigger. No matter her position, she sprang up and darted into another room, past tables, around corners, as fast as her short legs could carry her. She'd quickly find a suitable hiding place (different from yesterday's because that would be cheating), situate herself comfortably, and wait.

Soon, after Daddy had taken off his shoes and set down his briefcase, he would take on his role. His footsteps would echo down the hall, getting closer and closer as he searched for her. Stephanie would hold her breath as if doing so would turn her invisible and save her from detection. The footsteps would stop, just nearby. Peaking out curiously, she would see her father, scratching his chin.

"Now where is she?" he would say. Daddy would look everywhere for her and he was always surprised when his search came up empty. Every time he peered behind a small piece of furniture or under a rug, Stephanie tried her hardest to stifle her laughter. He was just so silly! Finally, he would look behind a tall lamp and the thought of her being thin enough to hide behind it would be too much for the little girl. Stephanie would burst out in giggles, betraying her position. Daddy would quickly sweep her up in his arms and join her in laughter. And when she remembered those moments of delight, she would chuckle a little to herself.

The truth was he usually noticed Stephanie the moment he walked in the room. The house wasn't huge and there were few places she could effectively hide. But Phillip Tate never told his daughter the truth. The game of hide-and-seek was the highlight of her day. To erase the wonder from his child's eyes would break his old heart. And she was never a bother. In fact her game brightened up the household. Sometimes her siblings would join in, either becoming "it" to search for Stephanie or hiding in ridiculous places for the child's amusement.

But never did Stephanie become "it". Being the "hider" was her job in the game as it always had been. This never once occurred to her. It was a kind of universal truth in the small world of the seven year-old, the kind that is believed without even knowing it. Only adults and big kids like Ashley and Michael could be "it". She had assumed this code very early on without even realizing. But in those moments of innocent bliss, who was "it" or not mattered little to Stephanie Tate. All that mattered was having fun with her family as she played the game of hiding and seeking, regardless of who took what role.

She had no idea the game would change so soon.

Daddy had been panicked. Stephanie had never seen her Daddy panicked before. She thought adults were always in control, no matter what. He had found her in the kitchen, swinging her feet as she sat in one of the big chairs. Before she could even look up, give a cheerful greeting or ask about the strange yellow liquid splattered on Daddy's shirt, Stephanie had been swept away from her pop-up book and stowed her in her bedroom with the orders: "Stay put and don't leave until I come and get you."

She didn't understand why Daddy had left her there. Never had his face shown such frenzied anxiousness. He had even made her lock the door behind him after he left. But she failed to worry. The severity of the situation her father was dealing with hadn't struck the understanding of her tender mind. Her imaginative and wandering mentality couldn't be bothered to sit still and worry about the undertakings of adults. Besides, Daddy was taking care of it. And Daddy always fixed things, no matter what.

So Stephanie waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And _waited_.

Of course, in reality it wasn't such a long time. But at her age, time was elongated in her perspective. Seconds passed like minutes, minutes like hours, and eventually young Stephanie succumbed to the plague of child-kind: utter boredom. The symptoms of this affliction ran rampant within her. First, she hummed the theme song of her favorite TV series. When that didn't help, she tapped her fingers against her mattress. When _that_ failed to work, she resorted to digging through her room for entertainment. She found an old puzzle box and a set of colored pencils beneath her bed. The puzzle was of no use to her since it had been solved more times than she could count and several pieces were missing, but the colored pencils showed promise. She vaguely recalled storing extra paper in her closet, just in case she was put in time out and needed something to pass the time.

With the package of colored pencils in hand, she hopped to her old oak closet. But when she opened the doors, her brown eyes fell not on the quire of papers perched just out of reach on the top shelf, but on a peculiar bundle at the bottom of the closet. With no recollection of the ever putting something like that there, she pulled the pink blanket off with her free hand and discovered something even stranger.

Sitting at the bottom of the closet was the oddest looking statue she had ever seen. The shiny yellow metal it was made of seemed to be gold, which, Stephanie concluded, meant it was very expensive. Mommy had always told her not to touch expensive things because they might break. But the little girl was entranced by the statue's ominous design and sun-like shine. Her fingers, as if moving as a separate entity, reached out and touched the slick surface.

A strange sensation permeated her fingertips. The feeling spread through the joints of her fingers, past her wrist and up her arm. She had barely blinked before the sensation had completely overtaken her.

Careful not to break it, Stephanie lifted the statue, which was surprisingly light for its size, and placed it onto the bed. In a better light, the statue looked more unsettling, creases of an anguished face etched deep into its slick surface. But Stephanie wasn't interested in the appearance of her new trinket. She found herself much more intrigued by how she herself had changed. Over the course of a few seconds, she felt…different. Her skin felt light on its skeletal frame, as did the skeleton itself and all the organs it housed. Every individual ounce of tissue, every fiber of her being seemed light as a feather.

The only part of her that didn't retain this effect was her head. Instead of feeling light-headed and dizzy, her surroundings existed clearly to her. Her wandering thoughts began to form a single file, orderly and neat. Her child's psyche was being molded with the understanding of an adult.

Now she began to realize how dire a situation her family could be preoccupied with, serious enough to panic her Daddy. Something dangerous was happening, something he didn't want his daughter involved in. And yet she didn't find herself quaking in her slippers with fear. The idea of fear had escaped the steadily working mechanism of her mind. Instead, she was overwhelmed with curiosity, like when she peeked out from her hiding spot to see where Daddy was searching. And for some reason, the idea of hiding didn't appeal to her as it would have just minutes ago. She wasn't quite sure what urge had replaced it, but she did know one thing: She didn't want to be a "hider" anymore.

Exploring a new sense of teenage-esque rebellion, Stephanie turned the lock on the door sideways and slowly pushed her bedroom door open. As Mommy had told her when crossing a street, she glanced both ways down the hall. Empty. She walked into the hallway shutting the door behind her. Silence.

As she strolled through the house, Stephanie found it all but deserted. She checked her sibling's bedrooms. Ashley wasn't diligently completing her homework. Michael wasn't tapping away at his computer. She peered into the dining room. Daddy wasn't pouring over papers for work. She checked the kitchen. Mommy wasn't preparing the next meal.

However, she did find something else of interest. On the kitchen counter laid a long knife that Mommy used for preparing meat for stews and such. Stephanie always steered clear of it, because Mommy and Daddy told her it was dangerous to play with sharp things. But from afar, she had always been a little entranced by its blade, how it could slice through cold animal flesh with ease.

As with the statue, she couldn't keep herself away. Her fingers wrapped around the black handle of the knife, and she marveled at how nicely it fit in her hand, turning it over curiously. The light from the overhead lamp shone across the newly sharpened metal, like a shard of moonlight. Just being in contact with the knife felt natural…as well as something else. A familiar feeling bubbled up from her lungs into her throat. A wide smile stretched across her sweet doll-like face as she erupted into a fit of giggles.

Suddenly the front door opened and closed. The trigger.

"Hello? Uncle Phillip? Aunt Kathryn? It's Alyssa!"

That was right. Stephanie had almost forgotten that her "cousin" was coming to stay for the weekend. That meant there were five people here now. Five people to play with.

Stephanie gripped the knife with a childish grin on her face.

The game of hide-and-seek had begun.

And she wanted to be "it".


End file.
